Las Vegas, CES 2008 -- SanDisk Corporation announced it has begun to sample 12-gigabyte (GB)1 microSDHC flash memory cards to major phone manufacturers for testing and evaluation. The 12GB card represents a 50 percent boost in card capacity from SanDisk's industry-leading 8GB microSDHC cards, which are currently available worldwide, and highlights the growing popularity of mobile phones with storage-intensive features that include music players, digital cameras, video recording and playback and GPS capabilities.

"Mobile phones have become a key part of consumers' lifestyles around the globe," said Jeff Kost, senior vice president and general manager of the Mobile Consumer Solutions division at SanDisk. "What many people tend to overlook is the important role that removable storage cards play in enabling the key features of these fully featured mobile phones. In fact, many people are not even aware that their phone has a card slot which is why SanDisk recently launched its Wake Up Your Phone campaign."

A 12GB microSDHC is ideal for storing large quantities of music, photos and video. For example, it will be able to store a combination of 1,500 songs2, 3,600 photos3 and 24.5 hours of video4.

SDHC is the designation for any SD or SD-based card that is larger than 2GB and adheres to the new SD 2.00 specification required for cards and hosts to support 4GB to 32GB capacities. The specification was developed by the SD Association, an industry standards board, which has also created three classes to define minimum sustained data transfer speed. These cards adhere to the SD Speed Class 4 Rating.